The Rise of the iPod (Summary)
The Rise of the iPod is a student generated essay detailing the history behind the popular music player by Apple Computer. The project is divided into five parts and a conclusion. Sections Summary The Early Ones: Predecessors and Forerunners The first section of the summary begins in Reno, Nevada, in nineteen-seventy five. Here, for the first time, a portable audio device is being tested by the public, a battery-powered player that uses lightweight headphones, and allows the user to listen to their own choice of music via a compact cassette, rather than being force-fed approved content over the radio. This pioneer, believed today to be the first of it's kind on the planet, is called the Astraltune. Fast forward four years later to a tennis court in Tokyo, Japan, where a man called Akio Morita, probably better known for his chairmanship of Sony Corporation than his overhand serve, dreams up his own personal music player for use during the game, and immediately commissions the modification of a businessman's Dictaphone called the Sony Pressman. In the process, he morphs the device into a pocket-sized, playback-only unit, and creates the Sony Walkman, the world's first bestselling music player. Were these units predecessors to the iPod only in function? Not so, as the reader will discover how innovative marketing and sales strategies, adoption by celebrities, and many other aspects of both the Astraltune and Walkman mirror or reflect a similar approach taken by Apple Computer some twenty years later, to equal success. Bestseller of the New Millennium: A Better MP3 Player The year is now approximately nineteen-ninety eight. Many millions of Walkmans have by now found themselves a home on the belts of people around the globe, and in the everyday dialogue of the Western and Asian worlds. Technological successors to both the cassette and its player are planned and being carefully introduced, such as the CD and associated DiscMan, also the MD and MiniDisc Player, not surprisingly, by the same Sony Corporation that started the portable music industry rolling not so long before. But Japan will not be the leaders in the second round of music innovation. Unlike the lonely plains of the consumer electronics industry of the Me Generation, competition is rife from the unlikeliest of competitors in the United States, like a joint venture between SaeHan and Eiger Labs, a duo which has just dared to argue that consumers will pay more for less sound quality in their future portable music players, if only the actual device is lighter and smaller. Behold their MPMan F10, one of the very first mp3 players to achieve modest success. Despite high compression in the music files it stores, and resulting poor bass reproduction, the F10 is considered good enough to imitate, and a whole new player category is born around file-based digital music. Quietly watching in the wings is struggling computer manufacturer Apple Computer, helmed by juggernaut Steve Jobs. And in 2001'' a sleeping American giant introduces the world to a ''better mp3 player, and the first massmarket successor to the analogue Walkman: the Apple iPod. The Rise of the iPod: An Intelligent Design Here we explore how, just like the Walkman, popularity is due to simplicity and innovation. After increasingly complicated iterations and supposed improvements to portable audio, Apple's product sports just four buttons and can be operated in a single hand. But, delivering on the same promises of computerized, digital audio players it effectively vanquishes, the iPod stores over a thousand songs and lasts longer than a pair of AA batteries. Little does the world know that by buying the white brick from Cupertino California, they are helping to reshape -- and ravage -- the very music industry they are trying to enjoy. Impacts, Part One: The Music Industry Prior to the iPod's debut and shameless adoption of the mp3 format, the diminutive music file type had languished in the darkness of the Internet's backside, shuffled illegally on sites like Napster, terrorizing music industry executives over the ease of duplication -- and redistribution -- the mp3 allowed. With this first major upsurge in music piracy, CD sales begin to drop for the first time in history, as tech savvy youths, unencumbered by the laws that be, begin to ''download ''their favourite albums rather than buy them. When the iPod arrives on the market -- swaddled in a plastic wrapper that admonishes those who "steal music" -- the landscape shifts even more as centralized music sharing sites morph into peer-to-peer sites that are harder to shut down, or nestle in legal loopholes in certain countries. Does the industry react? Yes and no. Apple again takes the upper hand and introduces the latest accessory for their wildly popular iPod: the iTunes Music Store. Impacts, Part Two: The Health of the Audience The pace of the essay begins to slow as we now approach the present day, having passed through almost ten years and 500 million iPods. How has the convenient, always-there music player affected our health? Almost like an addiction to sound, some users -- and abusers -- are now finding themselves injured victims of their audio indulgence, suffering from hearing loss and even potential cardiac problems. What are the risks of overusing our iPods? Conclusion The conclusion is intentionally brief, more an invitation to comment, share, and express your thoughts on the past, present, and possible future of the portable music industry. Essay Structure This student project was brainstormed after having selected the topic "Rise of the iPod," from a list of approved subjects from SIDES Online, for its orientation course. Several methods of presenting the essay were available, including a blog, a wiki, or an online whiteboard. It was recommended that once the topic was selected, that a mind map (list of potential aspects or subject matter) should be created, with a second one highlighting the final shortlisted items to be examined used as a template for making the essay. 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